Why Conflict Scares Us

I’m ten years old and playing baseball with friends at my school on a Saturday. The field is muddy because of rain, better conditions for football than baseball. There’s a collision at home plate involving a friend and me. He comes up swinging. So do I. We each land a few blows on the other’s body. We’re each covered in mud. Game over. Score tied 10-10.

My friends are all surprised that I got in a fight: the pastor’s kid. As we both walk home, my slop-covered friend and I are yelling things at each other. Crazy things, hurtful things, things we felt for a moment but later denied we really meant.

I valued my friends – all of them, even the guy I collided with. Sometime later, we met and made up. It’s funny – we weren’t related, but we both had the same last name.

I abhor conflict. Most of us do. As the above story indicates, too many times in our lives, conflict results in emotional damage, verbal volleys, physical pain, and relational distancing.

Why does conflict scare us so much – especially Christians?

For starters, conflict scares us because it’s unpredictable. Let’s say I have two co-workers who constantly make cutting remarks to me. I finally work up the courage to confront each person in private. The first individual quickly admits his wrongdoing and apologizes. The second person accuses me of “being soft” and “not being adult enough to take it.” I’ve reconciled with the first co-worker – but now I’m even more distant from the second one.

While I feel I did the right things, I didn’t necessarily obtain the right results. There is no one-size-fits-all way of handling conflict because it always involves more than one person.

After more than 35 years in church ministry, I don’t miss confrontations at all. I’d talk to one staff member about an issue, and he’d rebel on me. I’d talk to another, and she’d fully understand and cooperate. Mark Twain said he could live a month on one good compliment. One bad confrontation can ruin an entire month as well.

Conflict scares us because we don’t know how others will react to it. But …

Second, conflict scares us because we’re afraid of ourselves. Most of the time, I’m a pretty mild-mannered person. I know myself well. Give me nine scenarios involving conflict, and I can predict with accuracy how I’ll handle each one.

But put me behind the wheel of a car, and let another driver nearly run me off the road, and I can become a different person. (When my kids were teenagers, they used to chide me for the way I reacted to stupid drivers. When they began driving, they changed their tune. There are a lot of dangerous drivers out there! Of course, I’m not one of them.)

If a car approaches me from the rear and tries to run me off the road … if a driver cuts in front of me with no warning … if a vehicle plows through a stop sign without ever applying the brakes … I don’t know what to do with how I feel. The other driver has initiated conflict with me (not that’s it’s personal) but then speeds away – and even if I tried to follow the car, how would I communicate with the perpetrator? (I once knew a high school girl who made little signs and would show them to other drivers when the youth went on missions trips. Is that the answer?)

My point? When people threaten my life (and my car with 213K miles on it) I’m anything but a happy camper. In fact, sometimes my reactions scare myself! (Am I the only one who feels this way?) While I’ve learned better how to handle these situations over the years (“Lord, send a CHP officer their way”), I’m still amazed at the depths of fear and rage that can reside even inside a present Christian and former pastor.

Many of us instinctively know that we do not handle conflict well. Paul wrote about his own “conflict on the outside, fears within” (11 Corinthians 7:5). Over time, we have to learn how to handle conflict better.

Third, conflict scares us because we avoid it so much. If someone hurts me with words, I resolve not to say a thing. If a co-worker ignores me, I decide not to do anything to reconcile. If a pastor says something really stupid from the pulpit, I choose not to challenge him.

But when we go through life practicing conflict avoidance, we never get better at handling conflict. Because even when we try and dodge it, it still has a way of finding us. The way to take the fear out of conflict is to practice getting better at it.

On the Myers-Briggs test, my wife and I are exact opposites. For example, I’m a thinker, she’s a feeler. She’s intuitive, I need data. For years in our marriage, when we fought (and I use that word deliberately), we both learned a little more about the other during our post-combat wrap-up. Instead of assuming that my conflict style was correct, I’d ask my wife, “How could I have handled that situation better? How would you like me to talk to you about that issue in the future?” She would tell me how to approach her and I’d try and do that when we had our next conflict. (Ten years later.)

You can read all the books you want on conflict (and I’ve read scores). You can take all the seminars available. You can even write out all the verses applying to conflict in the NT (as I’ve done). But the best way to become fearless about conflict is to practice getting better at it rather than running away from it. View every conflict situation as a learning experience.

Finally, conflict scares us because the stakes are high when it gets out of control. When conflict goes south in the Middle East, innocent people die. When conflict goes poorly at work, people lose their jobs. When conflict goes badly at church, pastors quit, staff are fired, and people leave in droves. A conflict badly handled can negatively impact our lives for a long, long time – and we instinctively know this.

This is why it’s helpful to know the level of a conflict when we’re going through one. Speed Leas, my number one go-to conflict expert, believes that there are five levels of conflict. The lower the level, the better chance we can resolve the issue ourselves. The higher the level, the more essential it is that we obtain outside expertise. Leas says that:

Level 1 involves predicaments. Everyone wants to solve the problem and go for a win-win.

Level 2 involves disagreements. We look for a tradeoff and want to come out looking good.

Level 3 involves a contest. We want to win and get out our way. We form coalitions and scapegoat people.

Level 4 involves fight/flight. We either withdraw or want the other party to withdraw. We’ve become enemies.

Most of us handle Level 1 conflicts nearly every day. We’re not as proficient at Level 2, and it’s getting away from us at Level 3. We’re so out of our league at Levels 4 and 5 that if a conflict gets to this point, we either fight and get bloodied or run far away.

When matters get to Levels 4 and 5, we need to call for outside professional help, like a consultant or a mediator, or we can destroy individuals, families, and organizations.

I’ll write more about Leas’ levels later, but for now, I encourage you to try and keep conflicts at the lowest level possible. If we can become experts at handling matters at Levels 1 and 2, then hopefully we’ll rarely if ever have to deal with conflict at Levels 4 and 5.

My big concern is for the way Christians handle (or don’t handle) major conflicts, especially as they relate to the pastor. While pastors can certainly learn better ways of dealing with conflict, when a conflict is about the pastor himself, he almost always has to step to the sidelines and let others manage things. If those others are prepared, a church can survive and even thrive in such an environment. If the leaders aren’t ready – and most aren’t – conflict can have disastrous results.

If a church had a major conflict every week, its people would eventually learn how to resolve issues from a biblical perspective or the church would collapse. But when a major conflict only occurs once every five or ten years, then people either lack the skills to deal with the issues or forget whatever skills they may have learned. (This is not a justification for creating more conflicts!) I’d like to share some ideas with you in the future on how we might do a better job in this area.

One of my goals with Restoring Kingdom Builders is to “teach Christians ways to manage these conflicts biblically,” especially issues surrounding the involuntarily termination of pastors and staff members. I receive statistics on a daily basis as to how many people are viewing the blog, as well as the terms that people are inserting into their search engines to find me. One of the most common phrases is “how to terminate a pastor.” I don’t know if pastors, board members, or lay people are ending up here (probably a combination of all three), but I’m gratified to know that God is using me in some way to help others. There is a dearth of materials and teaching in this area in the Christian community.

Please join me in praying that God will use our new ministry to bring biblical and healing solutions to the hundreds of American churches every month that are considering forcibly removing their pastor.

May you become so proficient at conflict management that the Lord uses you to bring reconciliation to others!

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2 Responses

Thanks Jim for the levels of conflict. I learned abut conflict when I worked for Primary Plus. In the beginning it was very uncomfortable. But you are right, the more you practice it the more you learn about conflict. I think conflict can be seen as a friend if we know how to handle it and continue to want to learn about it. Just a thought… Kim

Thanks for your insightful comment, Kim. Unfortunately, the great majority of people in any organization do all they can to avoid conflict and so cede the way conflict is managed to others. And if those others don’t know how to manage it, it will affect the entire organization.